Thinking the unthinkable - getting a pc

[Angus]

I've been an Amiga user since 1987 and my 1200/060 Voodoo3 is still my main computer, but I've decided to get a "stinking" pc which would become my main computer.

Its really because I can't enjoy things like Youtube, various websites and now IBrowse doesn't seem to display the "Buy Now" button on Amazon. I'd also like to try some home recording and video things - and certainly some games.


I've been looking at various hardware options, and I seem to have moved (or been moved) towards the following sort of spec:

CPU: AMD PHENOM II X2 545 3.0 GHz
Motherboard: ASUS M4N78: DUAL DDR2
Graphics card: 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE 9800GT

Does that sound sensible for a bit of gaming etc and general stuff and not wanting to upgrade soon?

Also, will that be okay in a normal case, or will I need something with lots of fans built in?

Thanks for any thoughts.

[TCD]

Sounds quite okay. The processor has a good price/performance ratio (I would go for an i7 Intel one, but they are more pricey now). You should consider to put 4 GB of RAM in it, then I would say it should be fine. The 9800 GT is okay, but might be the bottleneck for 'a bit of gaming' in a year or two.

[Bloodwych]

Wow, I admire your dedication to the Amiga, but with a jump in power that great you are blasting off onto another planet.

I love the Amiga, but I love emulation on fast PC's even more!

You've made a good decision to move over now, with Windows 7 just about to be released.

The hardware choice is good for your first jump into PC's - good price/performance ratio. The 9800GT is a good card for current games, but the ATI 4870 is better if you can find one for a similar price. I'd even check out a ATI 4850 vs 9800GT, I think the 4850 will be better. I'm a bit out of touch myself, so have a quick look on Google.

Memory is cheap, so as Cyber says go for 4GB. To use 4GB fully however, you will need to run a 64bit operating system, so if for whatever reason you are sticking to 32bit you may want to consider 2GB if you are not gaming too much. 4GB is the way forward however.

[Ironclaw]

If you have been stuck with nothing but an Amiga all this time, I bet you don't have any urge for PC games (maybe old ones then, but not knew ones). Don't spend too much money on a PC then... buy something cheap, and get XP.

[Cammy]

If you're only just moving from the Amiga to PC, I'd recommend completely avoiding Windows altogether and installing Ubuntu on your PC. It's free, all the software is and will always be free, there are no viruses, and you obviously don't already have ties to MS or Windows so there's no need to get yourself caught up in the whole mess to begin with. I've been using Ubuntu Linux for a year now, and I'm thrilled with how easy to use it is. Don't let anyone tell you it's hard to use, you're an Amiga user so you're definitely smart enough to work Linux out. I'd also recommend making a partition for AROS, because it's evolving fast and would be a great companion OS for you to play around with. You might even be happy with OWB browsing the web.

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by Cammy

If you're only just moving from the Amiga to PC, I'd recommend completely avoiding Windows altogether and installing Ubuntu on your PC. It's free, all the software is and will always be free, there are no viruses, and you obviously don't already have ties to MS or Windows so there's no need to get yourself caught up in the whole mess to begin with. I've been using Ubuntu Linux for a year now, and I'm thrilled with how easy to use it is. Don't let anyone tell you it's hard to use, you're an Amiga user so you're definitely smart enough to work Linux out. I'd also recommend making a partition for AROS, because it's evolving fast and would be a great companion OS for you to play around with. You might even be happy with OWB browsing the web.

Is there a good working Amiga or PC-DOS emulator for this OS?

Otherwise I can't see why he would be interested.

I don't use other OS:s so I wouldn't know ... just asking.

[keropi]

yeah, install ubuntu and/or any other linux flavour and you will feel it is 1999 all over again...just get freakin' windows and enjoy the ULTRA VAST software library.
Recommending linux-based oses for someone that wants to also play games is totally wrong.

edit: also avoid the 9800GT card since it is old. You can get a GTX260 with 216cores for ~130eur nowdays...

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Ironclaw

Is there a good working Amiga or PC-DOS emulator for this OS?

PC-DOS : Well, since you got DosBox 0.73 you should know. Because you don't, yes.
Amiga : There's e-UAE... It should work fine, but it's not really up to date.

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

PC-DOS : Well, since you got DosBox 0.73 you should know.

Why is that? You mean just because I downloaded the PC version, I would have read everything to see for what other versions they had?

I lock my eyes on windows relative stuff and download... then close the page...

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Ironclaw

If you have been stuck with nothing but an Amiga all this time, I bet you don't have any urge for PC games (maybe old ones then, but not knew ones). Don't spend too much money on a PC then... buy something cheap, and get XP.

Yup, we use XP at work, and my son has it installed too. I'm comfortable with it, and its my preferred option.

I have nothing but respect for Linux users, but I sort of feel I have done the minority thing to death for a while and will risk being unfashionably mainstream.

I do fancy trying some of the older pc games certainly, so dosbox?

Also Playstation emulation? And I think Panzer Front had a specially enhanced release on the Dreamcast so I need to investigate emulating one of those.

[Bloodwych]

Cammy has a good point with Ubuntu and Linux aimed towards someone who stuck it out with the Amiga for so long. It's great for people who want control of their OS and solve more complicated issues with scripts and command prompts all the time, a bit like the Amiga but not as straight forward.

I tried Ubuntu (and Mint plus a few other distros) for about three months. It's great for people who just want to surf the web, do some word processing etc and if you're the admin of that machine and have the password, you can leave it to run knowing the user is very safe from threats. I'd set it up for my parents computer for instance, no problem.

However, one update (be it to gnome, xserver, the kernal etc) can hose your entire system and/or render all your drivers useless at the worst times; graphics card drivers are usually hopelessly out of date and of course opengl only; some devices are just a pain in the backside to get working; you have to enable third party repositories just to install Google Earth easily through a package manager unless you want to spend hours chasing up dependancies....basically you spend much more time on the OS rather than just enjoying your computer.

But if you enjoy customizing your OS, then Linux can be a great choice and is totally free open source software, which does give a rosy feeling inside. I really respect the Linux/open source community.

Me, I just can't live without Windows emulators and general ease of use it's monopoly provides. WinUAE is enough for me to never leave Windows.

I got sick of typing passwords and Sudo every five minutes in Linux; sick of trailing around forums for simple answers; sick of editing scripts (which I didn't mind on the ClassicWB); sick of trying to get Windows games working in Wine because many of the best are Directx not opengl.

Then I thought, why am I putting myself through this pain? Windows just works, has all the free open source software Linux does and since I have never had a virus, I can't even use that as an excuse to make the jump to the more secure Linux full time.

I am a Windows addict and too old to change my ways. I'm glad I know exactly how Linux works and how to use it however, very useful exercise for the future, but it's still too strongly tied to its server roots for a comfortable home desktop in my opinion if you are a power user.

It works great on my PS3 however! Love Linux on that!
.

[illy5603]

@ANGUS,

Sounds like a fine machine. I would wait for Windows 7 or at least make sure you get the upgrade promise if you get stuck with Vista.

Personally I use an Intel based iMac for my day to day chores. I have it set up to dual boot into either Windows XP or OSX. It honestly makes a better desktop PC for Windows than most clone boxes. Not great for games but great for being quiet and having to look at on a desk.

Linux? Like most have said, much respect to that community but I already spend enough time on forums learning how to get simple stuff like hard drives and network cards to work on my A1200. Why go through all of that with another OS?

[Charlie]

@Angus:
Now that's dedication!

I hope you're not getting rid of your Amiga - you'd probably regret it.

FWIW: I'd say the machine you're considering is a good choice. Put XP or Win7 on it (when out). Stay away from Vista...

...Have you thought of building an x86 Amiga?
Dead A1200 with x86 mobo hacked into it?

[ign]

@Angus

In my opinion, for general stuff you don't need anything special, just a middle-range CPU/Motherboard. As TheCyberDruid says, just slap 4 Gig of RAM in there. Just remember you'll need a 64-bit version of Windows or it'll never use more than about 3Gb!

As for games, you DO need a good VGA. Nvidia 9800 seems nice, or an ATI 4850, I have one and it has a great performance but tends to overheat. I like the VGA Charts in Tomshardware page to see current trends as changes happen quite fast!

About the OS... as much as I like Linux I would stay far from it, too much hassle to get it working smoothly and forget about games. But don't take my word for it, you can just install Windows and Linux in the same HD or just try a Live Linux DVD and try it without installing, which is nice. Try Beryl/Compiz for very nice desktop 3D effects

[Benighted]

I admire your dedication for the Amiga. I'm a mere returning fan, who abandoned the machine in the mid 90s. But I only had the A500 though.

When it comes to choice of PC, I would switch AMD with a nice Intel CPU. More stable, and will always be superior in performance. Maybe a nice Quad or Dual Core? I have the E8400 myself and I'm very happy with it. I do not use stock fan, but bought a Thermaltake Golden Orb. It gives proper air cooling when I start experimenting with overclocking. They say you can get it from 3 to 4 ghz.

In RAM i would go for 4 gb at least since you will do some gaming. In addition i would choose Nvidia GTX280 gfx card. A bit pricey, but well worth the cash. I only have the 260, and can just barely run Crysis in full res (15-20 fps.. not playable).

Asus MB is a very good choice!

[jmmijo]

Not a bad starter machine, really get 4GB or more installed on that box as RAM is dirt cheap for DDR2/800MHz type modules.

Myself I have the Phenom ][ 955 BE with 8GB of Kingston HyperX.

Since I'm using the AMD/ATi 790FX chipset, I matched it up with the Radeon 4870 GPU, runs Crysis just fine.

[Bloodwych]

I have a Q6600 - but I'd buy a Phenom II no problem. It's a really good CPU - corrects many of the things lagging in the Phenom I.

[eLowar]

We actually just had the OS discussion on IRC earlier again, and we pretty much decided to agree on this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...30680283477734 (thanks to skan for showing this to me, I hadn't known it yet).

I personally am with the (modified) Windows for comfort faction, at least on desktop computers (*nix on servers all the way). In my experience, for every day desktop use, it's much easier to work around the annoyances in Windows (there are usually quite nice solutions, because they annoy many people ) than to get some things that are simple in Windows to work at all with *nix systems (again, I'm not talking about servers here).

I'll spare you my why-I-prefer-Windows-to-MacOS-X rant and instead just concede that it's a viable option as well, although if you're used to Windows, you might just not like it (no matter what they tell you ).

[Slayer]

Enough of the dedication alright LOL

I've been an Amiga User since 1986 and will NEVER get a PC... heh

Good Grief

p.s. who the hell wants to watch lil movies on the internet? you people are all mad as maggots

btw, my opinion on PC hardware has not changed since way back in the day... SINCE IBM Crap is so bloody cheap NO ONE and I mean NO ONE has ANY excuse NOT to OWN the most TOP of the Line machine available out today... PERIOD.

also, for the hardcore idiots out there Top of the line would refer to whatever the PC world considered there flag ship setup... not some obsecure niche/dedicated machine... for example, In 1996 I believe I spent $16,000.00 upgrading my A2000... what kind of game machine could you get today in the PC range for say even $10,000? That's exactly what I mean, no excuse...

anyhow, rant mode off... be happy

[Shoonay]

@pmc: So, where is the next demo you promised to be "2 times longer and consist of 2 more effects"?

edited: lol, wrong thread...